The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

have seen Ghost.” This was good, I thought. A nickname was a start. “How’d he get the name?” I asked, though I could guess from the way he kept disappearing on me.
    “Because he really is a ghost. People have been seeing him for years.”
    I waited for a punch line, but it didn’t come.
    “You’re kidding,” I said.
    “Why would I joke about something like that?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “If you don’t believe me,” she said, “ask somebody else. Though I should warn you, popular wisdom has it that only losers ever see him.”
    “Oh, great.”
    Maxine smiled. “I’ve seen him, too.”
    “Really?”
    “But only once. It was last year.”
    “Well, I see him all the time. He’s always lurking around, spying on me.” I sighed. “And now you’re telling me my stalker is a ghost.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Not your fault.”
    I looked around the cafeteria, but I still couldn’t spot him.
    “So how’d he die?” I asked when I turned back to Maxine.
    “I don’t know the whole story,” she said. “I suppose nobody except Ghost really does.”
    “What’s his real name?”
    Maxine shook her head. “I’ve never heard him called anything but Ghost.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. I could find out. “So what happened?”
    “I heard he was like us—got pushed around by other kids—except it was worse for him because everybody ragged on him. Even some of the teachers.”
    *    *    *
    That night, while we were making supper—Mom was staying late at the university again—I asked Jared if he’d heard about the ghost haunting our school.
    “Yeah, Ben told me about him.”
    Ben Sweetland was on the football team, and that didn’t particularly endear him to me at first. But apparently he loved music as much as he did sports, which explained how he and Jared had hooked up. And to be honest, once I got to know him a little bit through Jared, I found myself liking him. He didn’t fit my jock stereotype, but then most people don’t fit their stereotypes. Oh, he had the look, all right, big and strong, but he had a good mind and a sharp, sly wit.
    When I asked him how he put up with guys like Brent and Jerry, he just shrugged and said, “There’s always going to be assholes. When I’m around them, I just focus on the team and the game.”
    “They piss me off.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, I can see how that would happen when you get on the wrong side of them.”
    “I don’t want to be on any side of them.”
    “So avoid them,” Ben told me. “They’re on the top of the heap right now, but that’s only going to last another couple of years. Then we’re all going to be out of school, and while your life is going to get way better, all they’ll have while they work at some dead-end job is memories of their glory days.”
    “They’ll probably all get scholarships.”
    Ben shook his head. “We have an okay team, but no one on it’s going to get picked up by any colleges. Why do you think Brent loses his temper so much when we lose a game? He knows football’s his only shot at something better, but he also knows it’s never going to happen for him. Or if he doesn’t, he should.”
    You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty astute summing-up for a supposedly dumb jock. But Ben’s always like that. He doesn’t ever seem to have much to say, but when he does, it’s worth a listen. So I was interested in what he knew about Ghost.
    “So what’d Ben say about Ghost?” I asked Jared.
    He shrugged. “Just that he was this kid who got a really rough time from pretty much everybody at the school. He either jumped or fell off the roof way back in 1998.”
    That was pretty much what Maxine had told me. “What does Ben think really happened?” I asked.
    “It happened before he started here, so he didn’t know the kid.”
    Jared was cutting up vegetables for the salad we were making. I was in charge of the paella and the dressing for the salad. When he fell silent, I glanced over to see him